An assortment of things from my first trip to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View (with apologies for the photo quality).
Mechanical Card Punch machine: I love that they had one you could play with! The mechanism is surprisingly smooth and it required little pressure to make perfect-looking holes.
A reference to one of the first ever spam messages – sent by telegraph in 1864! The sentiment about them has not changed much.
The Kitchen Computer, (pedestal version with built-in cutting board!) an unsuccessful product from 1969. “For 10,600 you got the computer, a cookbook, an apron, and a two week programming course.” <3
This “Silicon Valley Napkin” for an instant napkin business plan is so much in the spirit of today’s Silicon Valley it surprised me that it was from 1986. Instructions: Fill in product specs on side 1; Fill in business plan on side 2; Start the company in your garage; Throw huge rock parties, temper tantrums, anything you want—you have now joined the rich and famous of Silicon Valley!
Sigh.
This absolutely gorgeous little stock ticker machine. I want to make one!
All in all a fun trip! I do wish they had more things you could touch and interact with, though. It would be a really fun project to build replicas and emulators of various machines so you could really understand how they worked. Maybe a good future class project!
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